


Old

by estepheia



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Character Study, Ficlet, M/M, Masturbation, Season/Series 06, Slash, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-26
Updated: 2013-01-26
Packaged: 2017-11-26 23:28:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/655559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/estepheia/pseuds/estepheia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Giles has a box full of secrets. - Set during S6, some time after <i>Tabula Rasa</i>. Written in 2003.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Old

**Author's Note:**

> Won _Best Giles_ in the **2003 Candy Store Awards**

The picture isn’t in the album with all the other photographs of six years in Sunnydale. It would feel wrong somehow to keep it among Scooby smiles, birthday party snapshots or pictures of Jenny.

No, it’s in that other box, the locked one, an old battered strongbox that’s been with him for over twenty-five years. At one time it held change for the gas meter, then the band fortune in cash and wacky-backy, later the scroll with Eyghon’s summoning spell.

He puts his glass down – in it the dregs of his fifth shot of Talisker - and unlocks the box. The photos are right on top, in a crinkled envelope.

Giles gets out of his chair, and walks to the record rack, passing a neat array of birthday cards on his way. The LP he wants is at the back of his collection. He slips it out of its gaudy sleeve, habitually checks for scratches then puts it on the turntable. His hand sets the needle down gently on the first track, moving as steady as a rock. Moments later the sounds of classic guitar rock come out of the speakers. Music that would send Buffy and her young friends run for cover faster than a horned and cloven-footed demon.

The dark recess of the bottom drawer of the oak sideboard yields a clean ashtray, matches and an old pack of Bensons & Hedges. He fills up his drink, then lights up. The tobacco is dry, the acrid smoke stinging in his eyes and lungs.

He picks up the envelope, and goes through his sins. The faded colors of the first few photographs place the two young men in the seventies. Some pictures show them both, arms slung around each other’s shoulder, grinning recklessly into the camera, with a drum kit in the background, or a battered Citroen 2CV. Most show a lean youth in a punk leather jacket, black hair spiked, sometimes bleached, cigarette dangling from his lip. There’s a foolhardy and wanton glint in his dark eyes, or maybe it’s just Giles’s memory that puts it there.

He slowly goes through the pictures, sipping and smoking. He can almost smell the leather and the dope, the lager, the Chinese take aways, and the dank house in Hackney, almost remembers the chill smoothness of steel cuffs biting into his wrists, and hot sweaty skin rubbing against his own, can hear Ethan’s mischievous voice in his head. His breathing and heartbeat quicken. At steadily-approaching-fifty, physical arousal isn’t as sharp as at twenty, and it is dealt with matter-of-factly and economically, when it’s convenient. However, sometimes it’s the mind that needs relief, that needs to escape the tidy confines of duty and maturity.

It’s no longer necessary to do these things. It’s enough to tap into the past and let the mind wander…

The last picture in the stack is fairly recent. The colors and contrasts are sharp and accurate. Black fabric, shockingly white skin, platinum hair, dark-blue eyes, the dull gleam of old leather. A different man – but the same aura of rash sensuality. Spike is sitting comfortably on Giles’s sofa, one hand wrapped casually round the neck of a Budweiser bottle, resting it on his crotch, one finely sculpted arm lying on the backrest of the sofa, almost invitingly.

Taken in the summer of Buffy’s death, in a rare moment of peace, when they were swapping concert credentials and going through both Giles’s record collection and liquor cabinet.

Unwilling to accept the unspoken invitation Giles took this picture instead, already with his strongbox in mind, capturing the tilt of Spike’s head, the suggestive curve of his neck and a predatory smile that seems older than the body it’s wearing.

Giles leans back in his chair, the photo lying on his thigh, hands on the armrests, as his mind wanders down paths never taken or even seriously contemplated. The need to crush and rip rises up, like a dark well, filling him, blocking everything else. In his mind there’s a pale lean body writhing beneath him, face-down, handcuffed to the posts of the bed, moaning and cursing at the same time. Giles has no difficulties imagining the coolness of Spike’s skin or the coarse texture of peroxided hair in his grip as he yanks Spike’s head back in an almost impossible angle. In his mind he’s thrusting hard into a body that no longer ages, into a vampire who looks two decades younger but is more than twice his age.

His hands tighten around the armrests as the fantasy takes hold. No one will ever hear him say the words that are in his mind or know the ones he’d like to hear.

By the time a psychedelic synth announces the last track of the record, Giles’s mind has acted out his fantasy. A few strokes are enough and his body follows. He spends himself into a clean linen handkerchief. He tucks himself away and lights another cigarette. Leaning back in his chair he closes his eyes and lets the music wash over him:

_In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida, honey, don't you know that I love you?_

When the track ends, he returns the photographs to the envelope, puts them back into the strongbox, and turns the key.

END


End file.
